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Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs SharePoint comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Office SharePoint...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
4.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Content Collaboration Platforms (5th)
SharePoint
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
166
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (1st), Web Content Management (2nd), Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) (1st), Enterprise Intranet (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is designed for Content Collaboration Platforms and holds a mindshare of 3.5%, down 5.2% compared to last year.
SharePoint, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Content Management, holds 11.8% mindshare, down 14.7% since last year.
Content Collaboration Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server3.5%
Office 3657.7%
Box - Intelligent Content Management7.7%
Other81.1%
Content Collaboration Platforms
Enterprise Content Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SharePoint11.8%
OpenText Documentum Content Management6.7%
Alfresco5.9%
Other75.6%
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

TL
Enterprise Architect at Veidekke
Creating internal architecture content has become smoother but embedding linked diagrams still needs work
I'm not currently working with IBM, IBM Controller, or other IBM tools. I still do a little bit of work with my previous company, but it's very minor. I don't work with any software or solutions outside of personal productivity suites such as Microsoft Office and things of that nature. I use Microsoft suite, Exchange, Teams, and so on. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is more accessible for the average user, but it lacks certain features that more advanced users would look for, making it seem unnecessarily complicated to do simple things or things one expects to be simple. I'm not directly involved in pricing and licensing, but I work closely with people who are, and my company has a third party to help manage licensing. I don't have the impression that Microsoft is regarded as particularly expensive. The product was licensed directly from Microsoft. I would give Microsoft Office SharePoint Server a rating of seven points on a scale from zero to ten, where ten is the best.
AnjneyBhardwaj - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Market Research Analyst at IDC Corporate
Collaboration has improved through simplified document access and controlled sharing
SharePoint is definitely used to keep a record of our files and data. The capability is quite good because it is time-saving. I have used it only four or five times, but it has been very helpful to keep all my information in a consolidated manner. The search feature is one of the most beneficial factors that we use to filter out the latest data or the latest file as per our convenience and use case. When you have a large repository, this feature is particularly valuable. Role-based access control has been helpful while developing the knowledge platform. The roles were defined clearly, which made it easy for the four or five of us to work simultaneously and collaborate on our project in a similar manner.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the "Alert Me", which provides the ability to set an alert when content is either added or changed and that the alerts can be either real-time or aggregated for the day or the week."
"I believe the control and the restrictions, accesses that we can have once we decide to share any document through Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, are the most beneficial aspects for me."
"The ability to create simple web pages with diagrams and links is valuable, particularly for intranet work and creating wiki pages for a team to show how we do certain things."
"The best features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server are the integration between SharePoint, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, and email."
"The level of stability is good."
"Microsoft Office SharePoint Server helps with return on investment as it saves a lot of time and helps clients improve their processes."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its document management, which allows sharing with external users and integrates well with Office apps and Microsoft Flow."
"The solution is a Microsoft product, so they are constantly improving the solution."
"With accessibility from a DMZ, SharePoint is a good solution for outside access."
"Feedback workflows ensure we don't miss someone when documents need reviewing and approval workflows make sure the right people are approving it, especially when there are new or temporary staff involved."
"No code and low code, scalable, and stable collaboration platform. Straightforward to set up. Its support system is good and offers fast issue resolution."
"Helps with document collaboration and workflow."
"The ability to assign an attribute to a library artifact allows the site owner to create the appropriate views based on artifact attributes (category, owner, etc.)."
"What I like about SharePoint is that they keep up with a lot of updates, and they bring out new features. I also like that the system is integrated with the Microsoft 365 suite of apps."
"It is well supported by Microsoft."
"The collaboration features of SharePoint 2013 are probably the best I have seen in an enterprise product out of the box."
 

Cons

"The search feature needs improvement. I can never find the information I need when I use it."
"The velocity and speed of information retrieval in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server could be improved."
"The Branding and User Interface Design and CK Editor should be improved, as well as the upgrade process."
"However, when I migrate, a tenant-to-tenant migration presents a challenge to move SharePoint files easily to another tenant because we are using a third-party tool for this migration."
"The search functionality on the on-premises version is not very good."
"From Microsoft, the support normally takes longer than we need and it's not a route we appreciate."
"The UIs are really clunky and Microsoft needs to fix that."
"The solution requires a lot of hardware capacity for high availability and performance."
"Document management and the ability to easily integrate single sign-on (SSO) are areas for improvement in SharePoint."
"It would be nice if the platform made it easier to implement a complete document management process (digitalization, OCR, protocols, etc.) without the need to integrate software from different vendors."
"The UI could be more flexible out of the box."
"SharePoint Online could improve the user interface and when modifying any of the user interfaces can be challenging. Additionally, there are challenges with the detail in the analytics user interface and the overall customization could improve."
"Too many versions being released in a short time period. Too much time being devoted to migration planning."
"The pricing and licensing is one of the most crucial parts of using Microsoft SharePoint."
"Migrating SharePoint sites can be a cumbersome process and it usually results in the incomplete migration of SharePoint sites and data."
"For example, if you installed SharePoint on a virtual machine with dynamic memory, it could destroy the farm without any possibility of repairing it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"One of the reasons why we don't recommend the cloud version of SharePoint is the cost. With the on premise version, you pay for the license once. For the cloud version, there is a recurring fee. It is very expensive. They expect everyone to pay $20 or $30 per user per month."
"Pricing plans may be flexible depending on volume usage and your corporate relationship with Microsoft."
"There are some aggressive discounts offered by Microsoft for organizations that are not for profit, which we are, and it makes it quite attractive to consider."
"It can be expensive for on-premises deployments, especially when you have to support SQL Server as your backend database. That's where the cost comes into play. SQL Server has its own licensing, which Microsoft keeps on changing. Therefore, it can become costly. In the earlier versions of SharePoint, version 2007 or 2010, they had an express version where the SQL Server licensing was free. It wasn't like a full-blown SharePoint. It was only a slimmed-down version. It used to be whatever your hardware costs. You would install the free software and work with it, but you were very limited in what you could do in SharePoint. If you wanted the SharePoint Enterprise Server with all the bells and whistles, then you had to pay more to get the SQL Server license based on the number of users or servers. The subscription model is different for cloud deployments. Licensing is per user and per month. The cost also depends on the storage required. If you have a lot of sites or documents, then you need to expand it based on your needs."
"They are about an eight in comparison to other similar products."
"Licensing can be by server or by seat."
"We have purchased add-ons to handle multiple site collections, form creation, and design."
"The pricing is competitive."
"It comes bundled with the Microsoft 365 pricing plans."
"It is very expensive.​"
"The licensing model for SharePoint Online is based on per user, and it is monthly. The price of the solution overall is good."
"The pricing works for us."
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Comparison Review

it_user8925 - PeerSpot reviewer
Developer with 51-200 employees
Aug 23, 2013
Jive vs Sharepoint vs Drupal Commons
At Mediacurrent we often get requests to compare Drupal to other platforms used for intranet sites and social business platforms (like https://dev.twitter.com/ for example). This is often referred to as “Social Business Software”, which has grown in popularity in recent years. I decided to do a…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business81
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise84
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?
I am not aware of the pricing, so I cannot say if the solution is expensive or quite affordable.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?
My expectation when I start using a Microsoft product is that it would be easy to incorporate diagrams and such from other Microsoft Office products. Incorporating a diagram I've embedded in a slid...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?
I produce content about the work I'm doing inside the company, making information about IT architecture, work processes within IT architecture, and security reviews of applications or infrastructur...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SharePoint?
I do not know the difference between the prices of the two solutions; I did not work on this project.
What needs improvement with SharePoint?
I don't know how SharePoint can be improved because it works effectively, so I can't think of any improvement. It exists in the background, similar to Windows, where you don't think about it, but i...
What is your primary use case for SharePoint?
I have been using SharePoint for three years since I began employment at Wartsila. My main use case for SharePoint is storing documents, meeting recordings, and visiting websites created by my coll...
 

Also Known As

Office SharePoint Server, MS Office SharePoint Server
SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Del Monte Foods, Unicredit Leasing, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, Nokia Czech Republic, Perkins Eastman, JLL, ICA, óxito Software, Dorset Software, PKP Cargo, Arcapita Bank B.S.C., AVE CZ, Chesapeake Energy
Toyota, Aeroports de Paris, ASBBank Ltd., Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals, CambridgeshireConstabulary, D&M Group, NPL Construction Company, and The Regional Municipality of Niagara.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Google, Dropbox and others in Content Collaboration Platforms. Updated: August 2026.
914,394 professionals have used our research since 2012.